In the Collect for Advent, we pray to God, “that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal….”

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“Preparing for Heaven”

A wonderful Christmas hymn by Blessed Charles Wesley concludes with this stanza:

Made perfect first in love,
And sanctified by grace,
We shall from earth remove,
And see His glorious face:
His love shall then be fully showed,
And man shall all be lost in God.

We will experience Heaven as being lost in God; solely desiring Him and living with Him; detached entirely from the things of this broken and corrupt world.

Father Paul Raftery said:

Man is made for union with God. The fulfillment of this union comes in heaven. Only there will the human creature, into which God has placed a profound desire for Himself, have the satisfaction of all its hopes and desires. All the limited goods of this world cannot touch the desire for God that He has place within us. Nor can we simply turn off this desire. It is fixed within us, an irrevocable part of our nature.

Heaven is eternal presence of God. God created all good things. Only perfect things and imperfect things exist. We are fooled by imperfect things to not follow God. Thus we say with Hank Williams, Jr., “If Heaven ain’t a lot like Dixie, I don’t want to go.” But God eternally satisfies us; he made us this way. The real attraction of ourselves to a broken thing is in how that imperfect thing shows off God to us.

Today, we are confused why Heaven can be so delightful because we are confused in our attachment to the world. Our spiritual work as we mature in Christ is to detach from earthly things and see the sweetness of God. As we walk the Christian Way, we increasingly understand that our true desire is for God. We will thus eagerly desire to live with Him for all eternity.

So we must lose our attachment to the broken things of God and the lusts thereof (“the world”) which is done by attacking our lusts of those things (“the flesh”). Thus we must battle our flesh in order to get ready for Heaven.

Now we do not battle our flesh by ourselves and thereby gain Heaven. Not at all. We are Christians, not Buddhists. St. John iii.16 reads, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Christ our Lord came down from Heaven and was born a little baby on Christmas day over two thousand years ago. He defeated sin and death by His Crucifixion and Resurrection and prepared a place for us in Heaven in the Ascension. In our Baptism, we connect to Christ in His death and Resurrection, so we can enter wrapped in Christ into Heaven. We are part of Christ. We are made holy through Christ in Holy Baptism, the Holy Eucharist, and the other Sacraments.

About the Holy Communion, Christ says in St. John vi.53: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.” So we know from Scripture that we ought to follow the precepts of the Church and communicate regularly. Indeed, to be a member in good standing, you must eat Christ’s Body and drink His Blood at least three times a year. This is one of the Six Duties of Churchmen.

Besides Holy Baptism and the Mass, we are brought into Christ through His other Sacraments. If married, we ought to be married in Holy Church. We ought to use Confession as required. We ought to be Confirmed. We ought to receive Unction if necessary. We ought to be Ordained if so called. These are all sure and certain means of grace which help unite us to Christ.

Besides the Sacramental means of grace, in order to gain Heaven we must live our lives in this world in keeping with our divine calling. We are to imitate Christ. Christ is without blemish and without flaw. But we are well blemished and deeply flawed. What are we to do?

Christ tells us in St. Matthew v.48, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” In order to perfectly love and to live without sin, there are three things we must do.

First, we must keep the Ten Commandments and other matters of moral law, including the Church’s Law of Marriage to keep sexual purity. Thus we try to obey God’s will.

Second, we must repent of our sins when we fall, using the Sacrament of Penance when necessary, and firmly resolve not to commit those sins again, even when we keep falling into the same sins.

Taken together, these first two non-Sacramental actions are also two of the Six Duties of Churchmen: Keeping a clean conscience and keeping the Church’s Law of Marriage.

But the things of this world are lovely and sweet because they are created by God. Foolishly, we chase them instead of living holy lives. So the third thing we ought to do after the Sacraments is to break our attachment to the good things which God has made. This is called mortification.

Mortifying ourselves means living a life of countless little deaths of our own pleasure and our own will so that we may clear our minds of our inordinate love – that is, our love which is out of order – for this world so we can focus on loving God.

So mortification is essential to living with God in Heaven forever. While we have time on God’s green Earth, we must demonstrate that we chose God instead of his good things.

There are three ways we may mortify ourselves. First, we fast. Second, we give alms. Third, we offer to God things which are perfectly legitimate for us to use. Notice again that both fasting and almsgiving are found in the Six Duties of Churchmen. There is a reason why the Six Duties are the irreducible minimum of the practice of the Christian Faith.

The reason why the Scriptures and Church tell us to fast and give alms is not to lose weight, control diabetes, and help make sure someone else gets the food they need to eat. Those are good goals, but those are worldly reasons to fast and donate to a good cause.

The spiritual point of fasting and giving alms is to recollect that our bodies and wealth are God’s good gift and belong to him, and that our bodies and wealth should be used to glorify God and not ourselves. So we fast and we give alms, mortifying our bodies and souls.

Our bodies and wealth are good things, but we curtail them for the glory of God. It is okay for us to have that cookie and to buy something for ourselves, but by not eating that cookie and giving someone else the money we wanted to spend on ourselves, we thwart or deny our own appetites for God’s sake. In the Holy Ghost, we tame our passions. In a tiny way, we join in Christ’s Passion and Crucifixion.

But we can mortify ourselves beyond fasting and almsgiving. We can willingly offer up to God those things which are perfectly okay for us to enjoy. I do not mean sinful things which we must give up, but things which we peculiarly enjoy.

An example of this is giving up chocolate for Lent. We are supposed to fast and give alms during Lent, but we are allowed to do something extra. Chocolate is a good thing which God has given us. Some of us like chocolate very much. For us to willingly offer our temporary abstinence from enjoying the pleasures of chocolate to tame our appetites and show God our thanks is a laudable and praiseworthy task if it is wisely and prudently done.

But giving up chocolate while in the ninth month of pregnancy, immediately after having lost a job or parent, or during a divorce is probably not a good idea. Mortification has not the urgency which undergoing Holy Baptism and receiving Holy Communion have.

Along with trying to live a righteous life and repenting of sin, putting our wills and appetites to death over and over is a vital and important part of spiritual growth. Indeed, we cannot really grow in Christ unless we fast, give alms, and deny our wills and appetites on occasion.

This week is Embertide in the holy season of Advent, three days of special fasting and abstinence. Let us fast, give alms, and work at mortifying our will so that we may ably assist the Holy Ghost in breaking the world’s hold upon us so that we may thoroughly thirst for Christ.

In the Collect for Advent, we pray to God, “that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal….”

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.